This course covers communication skills that engineering leaders use every day to motivate, inspire, and support the people in their organizations.
Speaking and writing are basic leadership communication skills. (We covered these topics in the Specialization course 1 and 3.) However, leaders also need to be skillful interpersonal communicators. Modern business requires communication skills that are effective across cultures, generations, and genders. Communication is also a key skill in building your personal brand. Leaders need to look, act, and speak like leaders. Another important leadership skill is the ability to handle difficult, emotional communications with employees, supervisors, and colleagues. Finally, engineers are often at the center of crisis communication.
In this course, you will learn
1. How to communicate in a global environment,
2. How to communicate across cultures, generations, and genders
3. How to use communication to build your personal brand, communicate your values, and your leadership promise
4. How to handle high-stakes, emotionally charged, difficult conversations with employees, supervisors and your colleagues
5. How to handle crisis communication
Required Material Disclaimer- The purchase of a case study is necessary to complete this course, as it is tied to an assessment. This case is an excellent illustration of the typical business situations requiring skillful handling of difficult conversations. Currently, the cost associated with this case study is $8.95 USD and is subject to change.
Selected materials courtesy of Communiation Faculty at Rice University - all rights reserved.

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Week 1: What Influences the Way People Communicate?

Today’s global business environment makes good communication more important than ever. Those who lead virtual global teams need to be great communicators. They need to be able to persuade others, build trusting relationships, and motivate productive teamwork. To bring out the best in people and to find the common ground where true communication takes place, you need to understand the things that influence the way people communicate, including culture, gender, and generation. When you understand these influences, you can avoid miscommunication and misunderstandings, and you can help everyone focus on what’s really important—the business.

Преподаватели

Gayle Moran

Lecturer in Professional and Engineering Communication

Beata Krupa

Lecturer in Professional and Engineering Communication

Текст видео

More than 200 years ago, a British nobleman, the Earl of Elgin, removed many of the marble sculptures that decorated the ancient Parthenon in Athens, Greece, and took them to London where they have been on display at the British Museum ever since. Known as the Elgin marbles, these beautiful works of art have been a source of contention for many years. The Greeks believe that the British should return the marbles to their rightful home, the Parthenon. They are, after all, a part of Greece's ancient heritage and an important part of their culture. I tell you about the Elgin marbles to illustrate the importance of culture to many groups of people who share a culture. People identify with certain values, beliefs, and behaviors they have in common. You all are aware of your own culture, probably based mostly on the country where you grew up. In this module, we're going to talk about what culture is, how it influences your communication styles, habits, and behaviors, and how that knowledge and understanding can help you become a leader that communicates effectively in the workplace. First, let's talk about what culture is. Culture is typically defined as a system of learned symbols, beliefs, attitudes, values, expectations, assumptions and norms for behavior shared by a group of people. When we think of what culture we identify with, we usually think about geographic locations. A country, a region, sometimes even a neighborhood, but cultures grow around other characteristics as well. For example, people who live in cities have cultural aspects in common that differ from people who live in rural areas. Some companies, such as IBM and Google have distinct cultures that their employees share. Different professions have cultural characteristics that help define them. Engineers, for example, often share a belief in positive progress, a dedication to innovation and rigor, and the value of a strong work ethic. These create a distinct engineering culture. So you can see that you are born into some cultures and some cultures you can choose. As you saw with the Greeks wanting their Elgin marbles returned, most people are very proud of the culture they identify with. But it's important to remember one key point about culture identification. It is not a complete definition of who you are and what you believe. When we talk about cultures, we don't talk about stereotypes. This model created by Richard Lewis, a British linguist, illustrates the layers of culture that make it complex. At the bottom layer, we have the basic characteristics that all humans share. You inherit these, as everyone does. The next layer is what you learn as you are growing up. These characteristics aren't inherited, but they are absorbed, often without your direct knowledge. You learn about things such as your national and regional identity, ethnic and religious values, how age, class and gender are viewed and treated, what professions are generally pursued, and how much education is valued. And here's an important point I will make again, even as we talk about the general characteristics of culture and come to understand some characteristics associated with specific cultures. When you encounter people from a specific culture, you cannot assume that you automatically know everything about them. Cultural identification does not equal stereotypes. You are still dealing with individuals who have personal characteristics on top of all of their general cultural characteristics. And you must remember to take that into consideration when you deal with and communicate with people from cultures that are different from yours. Why is it important to study different cultures? Because globalization has changed business. And you probably already find yourself working with a diverse work group with people who identify with many different cultures. The more you understand their influences and your own influences, the more likely you are to find common ground and communicate effectively. You learn a lot about different cultures when you travel and that helps, but it's not enough. There are cultural characteristics that are harder to see and harder to understand. To illustrate this, we can think of culture as an iceberg. When you travel, you see the surface behaviors of a culture. You learn about food and language and traditions. But below the surface, where most of an iceberg is hidden, we find more deeply ingrained characteristics, how people think of time and power. How spiritual are they? What are their core values? These are the characteristics of culture that you can't see until you have immersed yourself in a given culture for a reasonable period of time. People are not always conscious of these hidden characteristics and you may not be aware of your own deep fundamental culture values and beliefs, even though you live by them everyday. In the next lesson, we'll cover how we talk about culture.